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Part 2: War with Granada

Part 2: War with Granada

Normally, in EU3 you will need to do things like "prepare" or "plan" before your first war. Castille and Granada have a special relationship in which Castille really doesn't need to do any of those things. Your starting army is pretty much powerful enough to conquer their entire country, and your navy is powerful enough to keep their allies from landing any number of troops worth worrying about on your shores.

Still, before we declare war on them let's do a few more things.

Portugal borders us to the west. We don't need any of their provinces to form Spain. It also appears that they have a mission to improve relations with us. A war with them doesn't really fit into any of my goals right now, so let's form an alliance with them. Clicking on any one of Portugal's provinces will give us access to diplomatic actions with them. I do that, then click on Offer Alliance. We don't receive an immediate response because it takes time for our diplomat to travel there and the game is still paused.

Aragon borders us to the east. We need 3 of their provinces (including their capital) to fulfill the criteria to form the Spanish nation. There are a couple ways we could go about this. One way would be a series of wars where we take the necessary provinces in peace settlements. Aragon is too big to completely annex in a single war, so it would take at least 2 wars with huge infamy hits. Another way to go about it is to claim their throne, force them into a personal union, and then inherit their nation at some point down the road. I'm going to opt to do it this way. The first thing we need is a royal marriage with them, but the game said that they were unlikely to accept such an offer, so I'm buttering them up with gifts first instead. I'll describe the plans with Aragon in more detail after the war with Granada is over.

You can drag and drop a square around a group of units to select them all at once, just like in other RTS games. I select all my starting armies and then right-click to issue an order to move them to Cordoba before I begin the war. At this point I also hit spacebar to ~* unpause the game *~ and hit numpad + a few times to speed it up to 3 or 4x speed. Portugal responds that the alliance offer has been accepted.

When the armies both arrive in Cordoba, I select them both again and then press the button with the 2 arrows pointing at each other. This merges the 2 armies together, and then I hit Ctrl-1 to assign that army to a control group, just like any other RTS.

Now we need to declare war on Granada. I click on Declare War, but now we need to decide which casus belli we will use. Our casus belli states what our justification is for starting the war. If we declare war without a CB, then we will suffer a big stability hit and be suffer larger consequences for the demands we force on them in a peace settlement. Let's look at what all of our available casus belli are by clicking through them on the right.
Declaring on them with no CB is out of the question, so we need to decide between declaring on them with a Reconquest CB, or a Holy War CB. The main thing we are interested in for this particular war is how much infamy we will accrue. I have plans for other wars soon after this one, so I don't want to be burdened by a large amount of infamy from our first war. In order to figure out how these 2 CBs would affect our infamy, I need to tell you that the base infamy cost for taking a province is 4, and the base cost for fully annexing a nation is also 4.

With our Reconquest CB, we would accrue 0 infamy for fully annexing them, 0 for taking Almeria and Granada, and 4 infamy for taking Gibraltar. With the Holy War CB we would accrue 25% (1) infamy for fully annexing them, as well as 25% (1) infamy for seizing each of their 3 provinces. Either way it works out to 4 infamy for us, so I just pick Holy War because it will give us more prestige.

I could also opt to call our ally Portugal in. I'm not going to yet, because I don't want there to be even the slightest chance of them getting to Gibraltar or Almeria via ship before I do. If they were to initiate a siege on one of those provinces before me, then they would be the one to receive the province after the war instead of me. I want them for myself. We can just go to diplomacy with Portugal later and call them into the war manually if we need to.

Its near the end of the year and I have plenty of gold in my treasury, so I queue up 3 transport cogs in my southern ports and 4 new land regiments: 2 cavalry and 2 infantry in some northern provinces far away from any potential fighting. The cogs will boost the number of troops that my navy can transport by an additional 3 regiments. I'm just getting started on preparing for the next wars to come after Granada. The extra land troops are going to be backup in case Granada's allies join in the war and somehow sneak a stack of troops onto my shores.

The game is unpaused again after declaring war on Granada and there are some immediate consequences. Granada's allies, Morocco and Tunisia immediately join the war. Our war with Granada fulfills the criteria of the mission we got when we started the game and we're immediately granted a free +1 to our Stability. Unrelated to the declaration of war, Aragon declines a royal marriage offer that I made.

Granada must have turned down their military maintenance slider, because their morale is extremely low (indicated by the red background on their army's regiment number). I'm going into bad terrain, but I outnumber them 4 to 1 and their morale is in the gutter, so I order my entire army to move towards theirs. My movement arrow is red because I'm moving into hostile territory. You have to be wary of the support limit on provinces. If an army's weight with the province is more than the province's support limit, it will lose troops each month to attrition.

The battle between Castille and Granada's armies begins and the battle window is displayed. The battle lines show how our troops are positioned, but there's nothing we can do to control what is going on here. All we can do is see how the rolls turn out and which way the battle goes. I have a terrible -5 penalty due to attacking into mountains, another -1 penalty for attacking across a river, and the enemy army actually has a +2 bonus to their roll here due to their general. If this were an even sided battle, I would almost certainly lose.

Unfortunately for Granada, they were outnumbered 4 to 1 and started with extremely low morale and this lead to their 2 regiments being completely wiped out. This battle results screen shows how much Prestige, (Army) Tradition, and War Exhaustion changed for each side at the top, and how many losses each side suffered at the bottom, along with the stats of any general that may have been leading either side.

The siege of Granada begins. I click "Detach Siege" on my army 2 times to break off 2 small infantry units to move on their other cities. One unit goes to Gibraltar, and the other to Almeria. While they are on the move, Granada manages to hire a regiment and send it north to siege Cadiz. The "Assault" button you see on the siege screen in the first of these 3 screens lets us attempt to storm the fort and defeat the garrison quickly. This will probably kill a bunch of our troops and severely damage their morale for at least a couple months. I'm still a little paranoid of potential enemies landing from Morocco or Tunisia, so I just let the sieges continue normally. I don't respond to the Granadan siege of Cadiz immediately because my 4 fresh regiments in the north are nearly ready and I'll be able to move them down soon.

The Ottomans formed an alliance with Morocco and then joined the war on their side. I could have done without seeing this. Luckily, the Ottomans are tied up fighting the Timurid hordes right now and can't really be bothered to send a significant force all the way across the Mediterranean.

The new recruits in the northern provinces are all ready now, and I order them south so they can gather in Andalucia before rescuing Cadiz.

Good and bad events can pop up randomly at any time. Some of my nobles decide that they should ask for a huge pile of gold that would put my treasury at well below 0 by the end of the year if I were to agree to their demands. I ignore them instead and take a -1 hit to my Stability.

Algiers joins in against me as well. I finally call Portugal to arms, and they gladly enter the war on my side. Aragon responds favorably to another of my royal marriage offers. Castille and Aragon are now linked by a royal marriage. This will come into play in the next update.

Before I could move my troops in to rescue Cadiz from Granada's siege, Portugal's fleet sailed up, dropped 9000 troops on top of them, and then sailed off. The Portugese army obliterated them for me and then calmly turned around and marched all the way back to Lisbon.

I notice an Algierian fleet with some troops loading onto it. I sent my navy to intercept it, and Portugal's massive navy raced over to join in as well. The Algierian navy was outnumbered by about 7:1 and stood absolutely no chance. One thing that differs between naval and land battles is that you can lose individual ships during a naval battle as they are captured or sunk, but you can't lose individual regiments out of an army. The after battle report for a naval engagement is basically the same as the one for land armies, except you are gaining naval tradition instead of land tradition.

While the other naval battle was going on, Morocco attempted to ferry some troops into southern Portugal. Both of our navies rushed over and sank the entire Moroccan fleet, and Portugal's army destroyed the enemy army that managed to disembark.

I move the troops I had stationed in Andalucia down to help hurry the siege in Gibraltar along. Once they arrive, I notice that they are over the local supply limit. In the second screenshot, you can see in the bottom right corner that the Supply Limit of the province to me, as an invader, is 7. My weight in the province with 8 full regiments is 8. That's one too many, so I split off a regiment of infantry and move it to Almeria to assist the siege there. I'm feeling pretty safe at this point, with Portugal in the war and a few enemy navies wiped out. There's no need to get any extra war exhaustion from attrition that I can easily prevent.

I notice that its October 17, 1400. We had an important date pass 3 days ago that I missed! 1 year from the original starting date is when other nation's unused advisors become available to us to recruit. I was hoping for a good Master of the Mint, but the best one in the list only had 1 star. I decide to grab a 6 star Banker who provides -6% interest. Once we finish this war and hit +3 stability, I'll show you how he can be useful.

Its the end of the year and I have a good amount of spare ducats in the treasury again. I decide to spend them on more military buildup. 4 more infantry and 2 more cavalry are queued up in the northern provinces.

The war has been going for over a year now, and Granada's allies are getting restless. They start spamming me with peace offers, but they are all extremely demanding. They are all ignored.

Granada's forts all start to fall, and soon enough all of their provinces are occupied by Castille's armies.

Granada's full annexation is demanded, and they have no choice but to accept. I actually end up accruing 1 less infamy than I expected, which is nice. All of Granada's provinces now belong to Castille.

And now that the war with Granada is over, I can't help but notice that Aragon is still in the middle of a disputed succession. In order to claim the throne of another nation, 3 things must be true:

The target nation must have a disputed succession

You have a royal marriage with the target nation

You have more prestige than the target nation

Castille meets all 3 of these criteria with Aragon, and we'll take this opportunity to force them into a personal union under us in the next update.

Adverts by Project Wonderful

Hey, adverts can be pretty annoying, right? I know how it is; I don't like it when I'm browsing a site and I accidentally trigger an awful flash ad where a big, freakish iPhone starts singing at me. That's why here on the Let's Play Archive we'll only ever serve up nice banners that behave properly.

The Archive is a personally-funded hobby, and without donation/advert revenue we won't be able to keep it going. Please, if you enjoy the site, consider adding us to your AdBlock whitelist—it really does make a difference.